Key changes from Con-Com version

The earlier version prepared by the Consultative Committee featured a Senate that would be elected by their constituent regions.

Among the other provisions introduced by the Arroyo draft is Article XVII on the transitory provisions during the federal shift which proposes that the Senate President will sit as acting president in the event the incumbent chief executive is unable to sit in office, until a new President has been selected.

In the Senate President’s absence, the Speaker of the House of Representatives will assume the said duties.

The introduction of the provision effectively removes the vice-president from the line of succession during the transition period.

The Arroyo version has removed the term limits for senators and representatives and each term has been extended to four years.

Arroyo however said that the decision to remove the term limits for legislators was a “collegial decision” made in consultation with colleagues in the lower house.

She clarified that the only provision she added was the provision giving Congress the power to establish the federal states.

Among the other key features of the original Con-Com version prepared in July 2018 were the introduction of a regional director and deputy regional director selected by regional legislative assemblies as the leaders of the 18 federated regions.

It also introduced safeguards against political turncoatism and political dynasties, which the Arroyo version has been criticized for leaving out.

Gloria Arroyo's draft federal charter proposes:

• to make the term limit of members of House of Congress infinite• remove VP @lenirobredo from line of succession if anything happens to Duterte

San Beda Graduate School of Law Dean Ranhilio Aquino, a member of the Consultative Committee, in a series of tweets related having read the lower house version and questioned the “federal states” it introduced. He also underscored its difference from the federated regions the Consultative Committee proposed.

OPTIONAL FEDERALISM?

I have just read what apparently the Lower House has passed around as its version of a draft revised Constitution. It is curious. It is intriguing. It is confusing. The core proposal is what I shall call "optional federalism":

“A federal state may be created in any part of the country upon a petition addressed to Congress by any continguous, compact and adjacent provinces, highly urbanized and component cities, and cities and municipalities in metropolitan areas through

The lower house version however has likewise decreed that a vote for a presidential candidate will be a vote for his vice-presidential candidate, a policy that was first introduced in the Con-Com version.

The Consultative Committee, a body of policy makers, former legislators, legal experts and political scientists handpicked by the president, submitted a different version of the federal charter in July 2018 days before President Rodrigo Duterte’s State of the Nation Address.